End of the ROAD: The Battle Over Light Rail
If money is the mother’s milk of politics, then Austin’s light rail proponents will be calling local high tech leaders “Mommy” for a long time to come. The latest contribution and expenditure reports for the light rail campaign, filed with Capital Metro on Monday, show that Get Austin Moving, the primary pro-rail group, has raised $403,770 in cash and loans over the past few weeks, and more than half of that money has come from high tech leaders. Michael and Susan Dell contributed $100,000, and the group got a $100,000 loan that was guaranteed by Capital Metro chairman and former Dell Computer exec Lee Walker, former UT regent Lowell Lebermann, and Joe Aragona and John Thornton, both of whom are general partners at Austin Ventures, a high tech venture capital firm.
That $100,000 loan almost equaled all the loans and contributions made during the reporting period to the anti-rail group Reclaim Our Allocated Dollars. ROAD raised $105,600, and most of that, $85,000, came from interest-free loans made to the group by four people: ROAD chairman Jim Skaggs ($50,000), group treasurer Gerald Daugherty ($10,000), developer John Lewis ($20,000), and Walters Southwest ($5,000), a commercial development company headed by Bill Walters.
In all, pro-rail groups have raised nearly $1.18 million. ROAD, meanwhile, has raised $211,000, but now appears to be completely out of money. The group spent $159,501 during the reporting period. Add in the $54,000 ROAD had already spent and the group has overspent its fundraising by nearly $3,000. By comparison, Get Austin Moving still has a surplus. So far, they’ve spent $941,000 promoting rail, leaving cash on hand of about $239,000. And the group has access to still more cash: The $100,000 loan was guaranteed by a $250,000 certificate of deposit at Liberty Bank that could conceivably be used to back additional loans to Get Austin Moving.
Not surprisingly, both pro- and anti-rail forces continue to spend heavily on media. ROAD paid $145,000 to the Ohio-based Strategy Group for Media for media buys during the reporting period. Get Austin Moving spent $330,000 on media buys, using local firm Rindy Miller Bates. Get Around Austin, the pro-rail group that was started by Vignette Corp. founder Ross Garber and later turned into Get Austin Moving, also bought media, paying $31,250 to Regan International Advertising.
This article appears in November 3 • 2000.